So let's look at what new goodies Blizzardclaus has under the Patch 3.0 tree.

Hammer of the Righteous - This is your new 51 point talent in the Protection tree. What this does is hit the current target and 2 additional targets for 4 times your main hand damage per second as Holy damage. This spell is on a 6 second cooldown and has a fairly low mana cost. As an added bonus, it is usable while you are silenced. The damage done is based on Weapon DPS and your Attack Power.

It is designed to allow Protection Paladins to use actual Tank weapons like King's Defender, Suneater, Mallet of the Tides, Brutalizer, and Unbreakable Will. Those weapons will do comparable TPS to a spell damage blade. We will go into more detail on this on Saturday.

This spell also increases our DPS while out soloing and works well when fighting multiple mobs. It procs your seal on each of the 3 targets it hits, so you can have 3 stacks of Vengeance cooking at one time.

Touched by the Light - This increases your spell power by an amount equal to up to 30% of your stamina and increases the amount healed by your critical heals by up to 30%.

One of the goals in Patch 3.0 and eventually in Wrath of the Lich King is to move Protection Paladins, Protection Warriors and Death Knights to all desire similar gear. This talent is a major step in that direction.

Spell Damage is rather useless to Warriors and is the stat that lets you know if a piece is meant for Paladins or not. With Touched by the Light, we won't need Spell Damage on our gear anymore and can gladly take what had heretofore been called "Warrior" Plate.

This talent is even more reason to go after Tank weapons and let the Mages and Locks stop worrying about Protection Paladins wanting to 'steal' their weapon.

Also, don't overlook the backend of this talent. Increasing out Critical heals by up to 30% helps out while soloing, and also helps out if we find ourselves in a healing position while not tanking. Holy Paladin gear tends to favor crit and this talent can help make up for some of the lack of potency a Prot Paladin normally has in his heals.

Judgment of the Just - What this does is cause the Paladin's Judgment spells to decrease the melee attack speed of the affected target by 20%. Can you think of any other spell or ability in the game that does that? Yes, Thunderclap! This is basically the Paladin version of Thunderclap which is a needed and noticeable reduction in the damage tanks take. This has caused some to call this talent ThunderJudge.

Since Thunderclap and ThunderJudge won't stack, the Thunderclap debuff can now be provided by a Protection Paladin, so there is little need for DPS Warriors to worry about it, or for Protection Warriors to spend their limited Rage on it.

Also, it has zero impact on the Paladin to provide this debuff. Since the debuff is applied as part of our Judgement, it's something that is already in our normal rotation. It's similar to when Blizzard gave Arcane shot a Dispel mechanic. Hunter's didn't even have to think about, it came naturally as part of what they were already doing.

Guarded by the Light - What this new talent does is reduce spell damage taken by 3/6% and reduces the mana cost of your Holy Shield, Avenger's Shield and Shield of Righteousness spells by 15/30%. Basically Blizzard took our old Spell Warding talent and added a cherry on top of it in the form of mana reduction cost.

You will note the talent mentions Shield of Righteousness. This is technically a new spell, but it's one Paladin's don't get until Level 75. Since my scope here is 3.0, I won't go into detail on it. However, Shield of Righteousness is a very good reason to maintain your Block Value set as you level up.

Shield of the Templar - I love threat and mitigation in one talent. What this bad boy does is increase the damage dealt from your Avenger's Shield, Holy Shield and Shield of Righteousness by up to 30%. In addition, it will reduce all damage taken by up to 3%.

The 3% Damage Reduction is not currently in Beta, but it has been communicated that it is coming via Blizzard on the Beta forums. I'm not sure if it will make the patch or not.

This to me was one of the most important talents added in Patch 3.0.

We've long known that our 6% Damage Reduction (DR) from Improved Righteous Fury was far behind Defensive Stance with 10% DR. The issue was that Improved Righteous Fury was low enough in the Protection Tree for Retribution Paladins to pick up, and in fact a popular Retribution Build was 0/20/41 for just that reason.

Defensive Stance is available to all Warriors, but when that Arms Warrior drops into Defensive Stance, he loses the ability to do many of his higher DPS moves and the Stance itself causes him to do 10% less damage.

The Retribution Paladin has no such penalties for activating Righteous Fury. So for Righteous Fury to catch up to Defensive Stance, the added Damage Reduction had to be deeper in the tree.

This talent was a big step towards Tank Class Parity.

Then as an added benefit, Blizzard gave it a Threat increase component as well.

Divine Guardian - This talent represents a unique tool in the Paladin tool kit. What happens is that 30% of damage taken by party and raid members within 30 yards is redirected to the paladins instead while Divine Shield is active. The damage dealt to the paladin is absorbed by Divine Shield.

When I saw this talent I immediately thought of High Warlord Najentus. He does an attack that hits the entire raid for 8500. With Divine Guardian up, the raid members within 30 yards of the Paladin would take less than 6000.

This gives Protection Paladins a wonderful utility when offtanking. Because Divine Shield makes you immune, the Boss or Mob will turn away from you while you under the Shield, so it's probably not the best idea to use this as a Main Tank.

The talent is shallow enough in the tree that a Holy Paladin could get it as well, though most observers think Holy Paladins will be looking into the Retribution tree for the 5% Spell Crit.

Here are a couple of sample builds based on the Patch 3.0 Talent trees.

You misunderstand Judgement of the Justs's place...Its there for when you dont have a warrior. Thunderclap is superior in every way, its an aoe. Prot warriors will use TC because it affects all mobs. With a Tankadin tanking you STILL will use TC for the other mobs.

I will disagree with your statement that Thunderclap is "Superior in every way" to Judgement of the Just.

Yes, it's AoE. But it's use will be dependant on the encounter design. Perhaps it's like Fathom Lord and the other mobs are too far away to be hit by Thunderclap or it's like Kalecgos where the other tanks is literally in another dimension.

Thunderclap is still a sacrifice of person DPS or TPS for a Warrior, while it is just part of the standard rotation for a Paladin. They don't stack.

It's possible people are concerned that slow hitters would reduce the amount of threat generated by Holy Shield. This is not really a concern. In T5 and T6, Holy Shield was not a major contributer to my overall threat. Consecration, Judgement and Seal damage were all larger contributors to threat.

Paladins are viable tanks for both slow hitters and fast hitters in tBC.

We excel at fast hitters because they can't break through Holy Shield like they can break through Shield Block to land Crushing Blows.

In 3.0, it's a none issue because Crushing Blows are changed and the charge mechanism of Shield Block is removed.

Judgement of the Just is a good change, and one Paladins have needed for some time.

From what I've seen overall from all my Recount logs Holy Shield is not really that large a contributor of our overall damage/threat at 80 compared to other spells on a single target. It changes much in usefullness when you have more than one target and much more.

You said (and I saw the blue post about it too) that shield of the templar was reducing dommage by 3%; but I still dont see it neither ingame or on any talent calculator that I know. Is it already added in 3.0.2 and hidden or is it still being tested or what? ^^